How to Enhance Citizens’ Sense of Gain in Smart Cities? A SWOT-AHP-TOWS Approach

Abstract

The previous technology-centric development of smart cities mainly focuses on the numbers, diversities, and types of applied intelligent technologies, while the citizen-centric smart city has become an important paradigm for improving the sustainability of cities around the world. The citizens’ sense of gain (CSG), which considers both material acquisition and spiritual feelings of smart city services, is thus proposed and regarded as one of the core orientations in the smart cities’ transformation development process from the centric of advanced technology applied to the centric of citizen subjective perception. To shift smart cities from being technology-centric to citizen-centric, it is critical to identify the factors influencing CSG and develop appropriate strategies to enhance CSG in smart cities. Hence, this work identifies 17 key CSG influencing factors based on the dimensions dissected from the definition of CSG and it further formulates 15 strategies for enhancing CSG by adopting the SWOT-AHP-TOWS method based on data collected from Nanjing citizens. The results indicate that the most important criteria for enhancing CSG in smart cities are the external opportunities, which are originated from citizens’ attitudes and behaviors, and the top-ranked strategy is “dividing smart infrastructure into different categories according to the hierarchy needs of citizens and promoting the synergy development of smart infrastructure within and among different categories”. Finally, four implications are proposed, including (i) strengthening publicity and encouraging citizen participation, (ii) clarifying the responsibilities of local governments, (iii) prioritizing citizens’ needs, and (iv) promoting age-friendly, vulnerable-friendly, and environmental-friendly development.

Introduction

With the continuous growth of population and development of society, a series of problems have arisen in cities around the world, such as environmental pollution, data security, food safety, traffic chaos, and energy waste (Feng et al., 2020; Hu, 2019). The “smart city” has been reckoned as a promising solution for these issues to make cities more sustainable and habitable (Sharif & Pokharel, 2022). Smart city integrates information and communications technology (ICT) with conventional infrastructure and coordinates new digital technologies (Freudendal-Pedersen et al., 2019). As of 2021, over 1300 cities worldwide have proposed plans, acts, and initiatives concerning smart city development (Jang & Gim, 2022). Therefore, it can be seen that the development of smart cities has become an essential paradigm for the sustainability of cities all over the world.

The majority of smart cities’ developments at the early stages are technology-centric, (Liu et al., 2021), which focus on the deployments, applications, and innovations of ICT, such as Internet of Things (IoT) in e-commerce, cloud computing in transportation infrastructure, public service platform in government services, and big data in smart healthcare (Li et al., 2015; Long & Thill, 2015; Zhang et al., 2016). The concept of smart cities tended to be technocratic. The number, diversity, and scale of applied intelligent technology became the trademark of smart cities’ developments, while citizens’ feelings were left behind (Marsal-Llacuna, 2016). Such technology-centric smart city development may bring a series of demerits (e.g., incomplete consideration of citizens’ needs, invasion of privacy, exacerbated unfairness among different age groups, and low citizen satisfaction) (Ji et al., 2021). In response to the aforementioned problems brought by technology-centric smart cities, the development of smart cities shift from being technology-centric to citizen-centric for enhancing the spiritual well-being of citizens, which emphasizes citizen perceptions in addition to the technology applications in smart cities. The citizen-centric smart city was regarded as a new paradigm for smart city sustainable development (Krivy, 2018; Yigitcanlar et al., 2019). Many countries have started to explore the development of citizen-centric smart cities. For example, the citizen-involved governance structure in the U.S (Hu & Zheng, 2021), a series of citizen-centric policies to monitor technological innovation in the UK (Cowley et al., 2018), and citizen-centric smart city development plans in Japan and Singapore (Asher et al., 2015; Chatfield & Reddick, 2016).

As the largest developing country in the world, China has been advocating the development of smart cities since 2010 (Wang et al., 2020a, 2020b). Since the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural announced the first batch of 90 pilot smart cities in 2013, three-quarters of the cities at the prefecture or above level related to smart construction and digital services have been carried out in China (Song et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2021; Zhu et al., 2019). Beyond the applications of advanced technologies in smart cities, the Chinese government has begun to actively set up strategies to develop citizen-centric smart cities to achieve a shift from technology-centric (technicalism) to citizen-centric (humanism) (Zhu et al., 2019). In 2016, the “National Informatization Development Outline” promulgated by the State Council (The State Council of the PRC, 2016), for the first time included a new type of smart city in the policy while emphasizing “prioritizing public’s sense of gain and breaking through technology-centric theory” as the core goal. A range of national policies, such as The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and The 14th Five-Year Plan have been proposed to break the technocentric development mode and emphasize the improvement of the citizen sense of gain (CSG). CSG is defined as the sense of obtaining based on the satisfaction of material benefits and spiritual benefits (Feng & Zhong, 2021; Gu et al., 2020), and it holds the potential to help measure the effectiveness of citizen-centric development efforts in China (Wan & Guo, 2021). According to its definition, CSG can be divided into citizens’ sense of material gain and citizens’ sense of spiritual gain. Citizens’ sense of material gain refers to citizens’ material benefits obtained from the higher material level of living brought by smart city services, while citizens’ sense of spiritual gain refers to citizens’ mental well-being towards social and living in the background of smart city development (D’Acci, 2021; Gu et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2022; Ruan et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). In essence, citizens-centric smart cities are seeking to reposition advanced technologies in a way that improve what citizens subjectively feel and objectively acquire (König, 2021). The incorporation of CSG into the development of smart cities can facilitate sustainable development (Macke et al., 2018). Consequently, the issue that how to enhance citizens’ sense of gain in smart cities is an urgent need to be addressed when developing citizen-centric smart cities (Huang et al., 2022). However, despite the CSG concept being proposed, the influencing factors of CSG in smart city development are still under-investigated, and there is also a lack of strategies for enhancing CSG formulated from the perspective of citizens.

To fill these gaps, this paper aims to classify the influencing factors of CSG in smart cities and then use the SWOT-AHP-TOWS methods to analyze the strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities. This work consists of three major steps, including (i) identifying influencing factors of CSG in smart cities, (ii)figuring out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of smart cities development from the perspective of CSG, and (iii) formulating strategies and providing suggestions for enhancing CSG in smart cities. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on citizen-centered smart city, CSG, and the strategies for enhancing CSG of different domains. Section 3 presents the methodology step by step. Section 4 shows a case study of the sample city and the results of the SWOT-AHP-TOWS analysis. Section 5 discusses the results and policy implications.

Literature Review

Citizen-Centric Smart City

Smart cities’ developments are criticized as being excessively technocratic which may not bring tangible and expected benefits to citizens (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019; Kitchin, 2019). The topics of “citizens’ benefits”, “citizens’ feelings”, and “humanistic” concerning smart cities have received increasing attention (Georgiadis et al., 2021; Zandbergen & Uitermark, 2020), and the citizen-centric smart city has gradually become a consensus among the public, scholars, and decision-makers (König, 2021). The material acquisition and spiritual feelings of citizens are both important criteria to reflect the citizen-centric level of a smart city (Ju et al., 2018). However, most studies have only analyzed the situation of citizens from a material or spiritual perspective. For example, the citizens’ material acquisition in smart cities has been analyzed from the smart environment, smart people, smart livelihood, smart economy, and smart governance aspects considering the citizens’ quality of life (Chen & Chan, 2022; Macke et al., 2018). From the perspective of citizens’ life in the smart city, the aspects of transportation, healthcare, safety, education, and environment were considered to assess the level of citizens’ material acquisition (Shami et al., 2022). Meanwhile, citizens’ spiritual feelings in smart cities have been evaluated from smart public service, smart public administration, and local culture integration aspects regarding the citizens’ satisfaction (Xu & Zhu, 2021; Yu et al., 2020). Some scholars have considered the consciousness of citizens from the income level and price level in smart cities (Lin et al., 2019). There were also many scholars who have adopted citizen participation (i.e., degree of citizen participation, approach of citizen participation, and feelings of citizen participation) as an important dimension to measure the spiritual feelings of citizens in smart cities (Feng, 2019; Guimaraes et al., 2020; Shami et al., 2022). Overall, although the existing researches cover many aspects (including citizens’ daily lives, citizen participation, citizen quality, and citizen satisfaction) in smart cities, there is still a lack of analysis of the effectiveness of smart cities development with the consideration of both citizens’ material acquisition and spiritual feelings.

Citizens’ Sense of Gain (CSG)

The Citizen’s sense of gain (CSG) is an emerging concept, and it has been applied to various domain-specific matters. There is a consensus that CSG is the combination of “sense of spiritual gain” and “sense of material gain” (Feng & Zhong, 2021; Gu et al., 2020). The sense of spiritual gain refers to one’s overall feelings regarding the advantages of economic and social growth, such as the right to enjoy fairness and justice, realizing self-worth and social value, and a rise in economic and social status. The sense of material gain refers to the feelings brought to people by objective material conditions, such as education, transportation, housing, medical care, and social security (Wan & Guo, 2021; Xie et al., 2020). Jia et al. (2022) established a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for farmers’ sense of gain in providing rural infrastructure and verified the validity of the model through investigation. Su and Li (2022) stated that subjective socioeconomic status has a positive statistical correlation with sense of gain in health-care. Despite an increasing number of CSG studies in various domain topics, there is currently a lack of attention and efforts on the influencing factors of CSG in smart cities.

Strategies for Enhancing CSG

To achieve citizen-centric, more and more studies focus on the CSG enhancement strategies. Feng and Zhong (2021) used a structural equation model to analyze the relationship between college students’ sense of gain, sense of security, and happiness, and proposed strategies (participate in social activities and enhance communication with others) to enhance college students’ sense of gain. Gu et al. (2020) developed a comprehensive framework for the concept of Employee Sense of Gain and proposed strategies to enhance environmental, social, and corporate governance ESG. Focusing on the link between capability deprivation and the subjective sense of gain of rural families, Huo et al. (2022) used the factor mixture model to analyze the group categories of capability deprivation and ordered probit regression to estimate the associations between the categories of ability deprivation and sense of gain. Wan & Gu (2021) analyzed the current situation of the demand for sense of gain, and proposed strategies (construct high-quality courses, cultivate people’s responsibilities, and implement “soft elimination” of training links) for enhancing the sense of gain of food science students. Xie et al., (2020) analyzed the impact mechanism of the digital business penetration rate of traditional villages in western China on farmers’ sense of economic gain through a combination of qualitative and quantitative study, and proposed strategies (improve farmers’ entrepreneurial intention, and enhance farmers’ attitude toward digitization) for improving farmers’ sense of gain. Although scholars have studied the strategies for enhancing the sense of gain across various groups of people for specific matters, there is limited research on the strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

Progress and Gaps

In general, the existing research regarding either CSG or citizen-centric smart cities provides a firm foundation for our work, but few of them paid attention and efforts to the influencing factors of CSG in smart cities, as well as the strategies for enhancing CSG in smart city development. To fill such gaps, this paper proposes to identify the influencing factors of CSG in smart cities by extensively reviewing policies and publications and integrate SWOT-AHP-TOWS methods to analyze the CSG promotion strategies oriented to smart cities.

Methodology

A synthetic approach integrating qualitative and quantitative methods is proposed for critical influencing factors identification of CSG and the CSG enhancement strategy formulation in smart cities (Fig. 1). The devised approach consists of three major steps, (i) Identify the influence factors of CSG in smart cities, (ii) conduct a two-stage questionnaire survey to identify the SWOT criteria, and (iii) adopt the AHP-TOWS method to analyze the strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

Fig. 1.

The flow chart of the methodology

Identify the Influencing Factors of CSG in Smart Cities

According to the related works on CSG and citizen-centric smart cities, this paper identifies the influencing factors of CSG in smart cities from two aspects: the sense of spiritual gain and the sense of material gain. The factors influencing citizens’ sense of material gain mainly refer to the smart city services and living conditions which affect their material acquisition. The factors influencing citizens’ sense of spiritual gain refer to the citizens’ perceptions and feelings toward smart cities (D’Acci, 2021; Gu et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2022; Ruan et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). The 17 influencing factors are identified from 6 dimensions, including CSG on public services, economic conditions, government affairs, safety, self-perception, and belonging feelings (Table 1).

Table 1.

The influencing factors of CSG in smart cities

Aspects of CSG	Dimensions	Influencing factors	Explanation	References
Citizens’ sense of material gain	CSG on public services	Public education	Influence of smart education (e.g., MOOCs. A large number of students study by MOOCs during the COVID-2020.) on citizens’ acquisition for public education services	Kranjac et al. (2021); Hudson et al. (2019); Williamson, (2017)
		Healthcare	Influence of smart healthcare (e.g., e-doctor, remote health monitoring) on citizens’ acquisition for public healthcare services	Yu et al. (2020); Zhang et al. (2021); Trencher and Karvonen, (2019)
		Transportation	Influence of smart transportation (e.g., electronic navigation, smart parking, online car-hailing) on citizens’ acquisition for transportation services	Jan et al. (2020); Peng et al. (2017); Carter et al. (2020)
		Environmental governance	Influence of smart environmental governance (e.g., air quality monitoring, water pollution monitoring) on citizens’ demand for natural environment	Lin et al. (2019); Shami et al. (2022); Chen and Chan, (2022); Nikolic and Yang, (2020)
		Social guarantee services	Influence of smart social guarantee services (e.g., housing, unemployment, insurance, and vulnerable groups) on citizens’ acquisition for social guarantee services	Khatoun and Zeadally, (2017); Alsamhi et al. (2019); Shami et al. (2022); Xie et al. (2019); Sookhak et al. (2019)
		Aging services	Influence of smart aging services (e.g., ageing-friendly facilities) on citizens’ acquisition for retirement services	Ziganshina et al. (2020); Ivan et al. (2020); Li and Woolrych, (2021)
	CSG on economic conditions	Income level	Influence of citizens’ income level in smart cities on citizens’ smart city living conditions	Chanak and Banerjee, (2021); Pieroni et al. (2021)
		Price level	Influence of price level in smart cities on citizens’ smart city living conditions	Pieroni et al. (2021); Chen and Chan, (2022)
	CSG on government affairs	Government online services	Influence of smart government online services on citizens’ life convenience	Valencia-Arias et al. (2021); Yeh, (2017); Vidiasova and Cronemberger, (2020); Dameri and Benevolo, (2016)
		Political participation	Influence of smart political participation on citizens’ demand for participation	Feng, (2019); De Guimaraes et al. (2020); Shami et al. (2022); Simonofski et al. (2021); Szarek-Iwaniuk and Senetra, (2020)
	CSG on safety	Social public safety	Influence of smart social public safety (e.g., electronic police, monitoring system) on citizens’ demand for public safety	Alsamhi et al. (2019); Piro et al. (2014); Wereda et al. (2022)
		Food hygiene and safety	Influence of smart food hygiene and safety on citizens’ demand for food hygiene and safety	Nagarajan et al. (2022); Ebenso et al. (2022)
		Internet and data safety	Influence of smart internet and data safety on citizens’ demand for internet and data safety	Sookhak et al. (2019); Mohamed et al. (2020); Alsamhi et al. (2019); Braun et al. (2018)
Citizens’ sense of spiritual gain	CSG on self- perception	Self-worth	Influence of citizens’ self-worth realization in smart cities on citizens’ spiritual feelings	Feng and Zhong, (2021); Gu et al. (2020)
		Socioeconomic status	Influence of citizens’ socioeconomic status in smart cities on citizens’ spiritual feelings	Xie et al. (2020); Wang et al. (2020a, 2020b)
	CSG on belonging feelings	Regional cultural integration	Influence of regional cultural integration in smart cities on citizens’ spiritual feelings	Xie and Yin, (2022); Yang and Ma, (2021)
		Social fairness and justice	Influence of right to enjoy social fairness and justice in smart cities on citizens’ spiritual feelings	Bennati et al. (2018); Masucci et al. (2020)

Conduct a Two-Stage Questionnaire Survey and Determine the SWOT Sub-criteria

SWOT analysis is to enumerate various major internal strengths, weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats closely related to the research object through investigation, arrange them in the form of a matrix, and then uses the idea of systematic analysis to match various factors with each other analysis. It helps derive a series of corresponding conclusions for decision-making (Casebeer, 1993; Sharma & Bhatia, 1996). This approach is a well-known tool that many firms utilize to make better decisions and assess their strategic position (Dyson, 2004; Rizzo & Kim, 2005). In order to formulate strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities, the characteristics of smart cities were regarded as the internal environment, while citizens’ attitudes and behaviors in smart cities were regarded as the external environment.

Based on the CSG influencing factors identified in the last step (Table 1), a questionnaire survey analyzing the effectiveness of smart city development from the perspective of CSG was distributed in a sample city.

The survey was divided into two stages. In the first stage, we used a questionnaire survey to ask citizens whether these smart city development supply indicators and CSG influencing factors can correspondingly have a positive impact on their CSG. The smart cities’ developments supply indicators were the integration of smart infrastructure and smart systems with all aspects of life (e.g., education, healthcare, transportation, and environment), according to “the plan to facilitate the development of the digital economy in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025)” (The State Council of the PRC, 2021). A 5-level scale (−2,−1,0,1,2) was used, where −2 is the very strongly disagree, −1 is disagree, 0 means neutral, 1 is agree and 2 is strongly agree. The internal strengths and external opportunities of smart city development are summarized from the results with a score greater than the average, and the internal weaknesses and external threats are summarized from the results with a score less than the average (Shen et al., 2018).

Determine the Criteria/Sub-criteria Weights and Formulate Strategies

Based on the criteria and sub-criteria identified in the second step, the AHP method and TOWS method were used to determine the weights of criteria and sub-criteria and formulate strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

The AHP analysis is used to complement the SWOT analysis. This is because it measures each aspect depending on its importance to the respective organization (Kim et al., 2017; Saaty, 1986). The four aspects of strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat are regarded as criteria in the AHP analysis, and the relative weights (RW) of each aspect are computed. Then, the sub-criteria (S1–S5, W1–W5, O1–O5, and T1–T5 in Table 2) for each criterion are compared in pairs in their own criterion group (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats in Table 2) to get the relative priority (RP in Table 4). Since RP is the priority of the sub-criteria within the criterion group, the total prioritization (TP in Table 4) requires multiplying RP by RW (Asadpourian et al., 2020). The TP of each sub-criteria is calculated in Eq. 1. The sub-criteria were ranked within the criterion group based on RP, while their total ranking among all sub-criteria is based on TP (Savari & Shokati Amghani, 2022).

Table 2.

The sub-criteria of smart city effectiveness from the perspective of GSG

Strengths	Sources (first stage)	Approval rating (second stage) (%)
S1: Improve citizens’ material quality of life	Q1, Q2, Q3	89
S2: Provide a complete guarantee for citizens	Q5	87
S3: Provide public safety protection for citizens	Q12, Q14	85
S4: Provide a comfortable natural environment for citizens	Q4	80
S5: Improve the convenience of citizens’ life	Q16	83

Opportunities	Sources	Approval rating (%)
O1: Citizens’ increasing consumption level	Q9, Q21	88
O2: Citizens’ high governmental institutional trust	Q10, Q20, Q21	69
O3: Citizens’ ever-growing needs for a better life	Q19, Q21	90
O4: Citizens’ high acceptance of the local government’s development planning	Q18	71
O5: Citizens’ positive response to the national policy of benefiting the people	Q20	85

Weaknesses	Sources	Approval rating (%)
W1: Low data synergy efficiency	Q17	73
W2: Non-comprehensive legal system	Q6	91
W3: Low urban resilience	Q13	92
W4: Insufficient consideration of citizens’ needs	Q24	93
W5: A regional imbalance in development	Q23	97

Threats	Sources	Approval rating (%)
T1: Citizens’ low awareness of the connotation of the smart city	Q8	78
T2: Citizens’ low willingness to participate in the development process	Q11	62
T3: Citizens’ low sense of belonging	Q22,Q23	70
T4: A high threshold for vulnerable groups to use public service	Q7	85
T5: Citizens’ personal information data at risk	Q15	73

Table 4.

Relative priority and total priority of sub-criteria

Criteria	RW (Relative weight)	Sub-criteria (S1–S5, W1–W5, O1–O5, and T1–T5 in Table 2)	RP (Relative priority)	TP (Total prioritization)	CR (corresponding to the analysis of RP)	CR (corresponding to the analysis of RW)
Strengths	0.341	S1	0.296	0.101	0.04	0.03
		S2	0.121	0.041
		S3	0.180	0.061
		S4	0.107	0.036
		S5	0.296	0.101
Weaknesses	0.138	W1	0.187	0.026	0.03
		W2	0.241	0.033
		W3	0.103	0.014
		W4	0.395	0.055
		W5	0.074	0.010
Opportunities	0.432	O1	0.118	0.051	0.06
		O2	0.097	0.042
		O3	0.295	0.127
		O4	0.218	0.094
		O5	0.272	0.118
Threats	0.089	T1	0.108	0.010	0.07
		T2	0.342	0.030
		T3	0.077	0.007
		T4	0.207	0.018
		T5	0.266	0.024

The techniques for applying the AHP approach to derive weighting values between indicators are based on a judgment matrix. In this study, Experts are asked to rate each indicator on a paired basis using the Saaty numerical scale of 1 to 9 (Saaty et al., 2007). The indications with a higher number are more essential in the comparison judgment. Furthermore, the consistency ratio (CR in Table 4) is utilized to assess the judgment matrix’s sensitivity and consistency. According to Hummel et al. (2014), if CR > 0.1, the judgment matrix is irrational and must be re-determined.

An expertise committee from smart city development and administration, university faculty members, government officials, and business people are formed to decide the weighting and analyze the rationality of each indicator (step 3 in Fig. 1).

The TOWS analysis is conducted to derive CSG enhancement strategies. Hence, by using the TOWS matrix, strategies may be designed based on the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Gottfried et al., 2018; Seker et al., 2012). These strategies are developed by utilizing the strengths and possibilities of the various stakeholders while minimizing their weaknesses and risks. By combining each strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat, enhancement strategies are determined in four modes: SO, ST, WO, and WT. Each of the strategies is developed using a mix of sub-criteria at this step and the sub-criteria that make up each strategy come from different groups of criteria, thus to calculate the total weight (TW in Table 6) of each strategy, the sub-criteria weights between different groups must be multiplied (Asadpourian et al., 2020; Gottfried et al., 2018; Savari & Shokati Amghani, 2022). The priority of each strategy is ranked by TW (Savari & Shokati Amghani, 2022). The TWs of the four kinds (SO, ST, WO, and WT in Table 5) of strategy are respectively calculated in Eqs. 2–5, where TW refers to the total weight of a strategy, TP refers to the total prioritization of sub-criteria, n and m imply to the number of sub-criteria of a criterion group included in the strategy, and k means to the serial number of a certain type of strategy.

Table 6.

The strategies for enhancing citizens’ sense of gain in smart cities

Strengths	Sub-criteria used for each strategy	TW	Rank
SO1	S1, S5, O2, O3	0.03414	1
SO2	S3, S5, O1	0.01636	4
SO3	S2, S3, O2, O3, O4	0.02018	3
SO4	S4, O2, O4	0.00490	9
SO	–	0.06995	1
ST1	S1, S2, S5, T1, T2	0.00972	5
ST2	S1, S2, S5, T4	0.00437	10
ST3	S1, S4, T3	0.00096	15
ST4	S3, S5, T5	0.00389	11
ST	–	0.01894	3
WO1	W3, O3, O4, O5	0.00533	8
WO2	W4, O2, O3, O4, O5	0.02096	2
WO3	W2, O4, O5	0.00700	7
WO4	W1, W5, O3, O4	0.00796	6
WO	–	0.04124	2
WT1	W1, W2, T5	0.00142	14
WT2	W4, T1, T2, T3	0.00259	12
WT3	W3, W4, W5, T4	0.00142	13
WT	–	0.00542	4

Table 5.

The TOWS matrix for determining strategies to enhance CSG in smart cities

SO strategies	ST strategies
SO1: Divide smart infrastructure into different categories according to the hierarchy needs of citizens and promote the synergy development of smart infrastructure within and among different categories	ST1: Strengthen the publicity of smart city development and establish citizen participation paradigms that meet citizens’ participation interests and behaviors based on the functions of different departments
SO2: Create a convenient and safe consumption environment and promote citizens’ online e-commerce and offline smart services consumption	ST2: Promote the age-friendly construction of smart cities
SO3: Clarify the role of local governments and departments in enhancing the CSG process for smart cities in terms of bottom-up analysis of local citizens' needs and top-down implementation of national policies	ST3: Promote the integration of smart city development and regional cultural characteristics
SO4: Apply Internet and Internet of Things technologies to natural environment monitoring and promote the development of environmental-friendly smart cities	ST4: Optimization of personal data protection for citizens in the smart systems and using blockchain technology to establish a multi-channel password lock mechanism for citizen information access

WO strategies	WT strategies
WO1: Improve urban resilience, and improve the synergy of smart systems and smart infrastructure in all phases of disasters to protect the lives and property of citizens	WT1: Improve the legal system for the protection of citizens’ personal information data
WO2: Conduct surveys of citizens’ needs, analyze the priority needs of various groups of citizens (e.g., different age, different careers, different incomes, and different gender), and formulate smart city development policies based on the priority of citizens’ needs for a better life	WT2: Establish a feedback mechanism for citizens on the benefits of smart cities and make citizens share the dividends of development
WO3: Improve the supervision of smart city development and establish a multi-sectoral citizen feedback mechanism that allows citizens to participate in the supervision of smart city development	WT3: Reduce the difficulty of using smart city public service
WO4: Improve the data synergy mechanism of smart city development and promote balanced development

Here Eq. 2 is taken as the example to express the calculation process in detail, TW_SOk (Eq. 2) refers to the total weight of the kth strategy in the SO strategy set, TP_S1 means the total prioritization of S1, TP_Si implies the total prioritization of the ith strength(S), TP_O1 refers to the total prioritization of O1, TP_Oi means to the total prioritization of the ith opportunity(O), n refers the number of opportunities (sub-criteria in O criterion group) contained in the kth strategy in the SO strategy set, and m refers the number of strengths (sub-criteria in S criterion group) contained in the kth strategy in the SO strategy set.

$$TP=RW\times RP$$ 1

$$T{W}_{\mathit{SOk}}=f\left(T{P}_{S1},T{P}_{S2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Sm}}/T{P}_{O1},T{P}_{O2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{On}}\right)=\sum _{i=1}^m\sum _{j=1}^{n}T{P}_{\mathit{Si}}\times T{P}_{\mathit{Oj}}$$ 2

$$T{W}_{\mathit{WOk}}=f\left(T{P}_{W1},T{P}_{W2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Wm}}/T{P}_{O1},T{P}_{O2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{On}}\right)=\sum _{i=1}^m\sum _{j=1}^{n}T{P}_{\mathit{Wi}}\times T{P}_{\mathit{Oj}}$$ 3

$$T{W}_{\mathit{STk}}=f\left(T{P}_{S1},T{P}_{S2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Sm}}/T{P}_{T1},T{P}_{T2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Tn}}\right)=\sum _{i=1}^m\sum _{j=1}^{n}T{P}_{\mathit{Si}}\times T{P}_{\mathit{Tj}}$$ 4

$$T{W}_{\mathit{WTk}}=f\left(T{P}_{W1},T{P}_{W2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Wm}}/T{P}_{T1},T{P}_{T2},\dots ,T{P}_{\mathit{Tn}}\right)=\sum _{i=1}^m\sum _{j=1}^{n}T{P}_{\mathit{Wi}}\times T{P}_{\mathit{Tj}}$$ 5

Case Study

Case Area

Smart Nanjing City’s (SNC) development began early in China as one of the first pilot smart cities. It has excelled in smart transportation, smart education, smart aging services, smart governmance, and other smart developments. At the same time, Nanjing’s policies and measures for enhancing CSG (e.g., “Smart Nanjing” app to improve city services) are representative of China’s smart cities’ developments. In short, Nanjing’s experience will not only assist other cities of a similar scale (e.g., Suzhou, Zhengzhou, Qingdao.) in developing smart cities, but also give important lessons and references for other smart cities in China and elsewhere (Yuan et al., 2020).

SWOT Sub-criteria Identification Results

Before the surveys were conducted, a group of 25 experts, including smart city services providers, university researchers, and government authorities in the field of smart city, examined and refined the questionnaire to verify its comprehensiveness and validity. And then, the questionnaires were sent to a focus group of 94 citizens for a pilot investigation. These citizens, who were from different communities and had extensive experience using smart city services, were interviewed in-depth to ask for their input on changes to the questionnaires. After several revisions and feedback, the clarity of the questionnaires was improved.

SNC has an urban population of over 8.5 million, so in order to reach a 95% confidence level with a 5% confidence interval, at least 385 complete responses would need to be collected (Gu et al., 2019). To ensure the comprehensiveness of the sample, respondents from different types of communities in each district of Nanjing were selected randomly and contacted through the community residential committee. Respondents were asked to fill in online questionnaires based on their subject feelings toward smart city services. And the people who were disabled or too old to complete the questionnaire were interviewed patiently onsite and were helped to complete the paper questionnaire. The first stage questionnaire survey was carried out from April 1, 2022, to May 5, 2022, to preliminarily determine the SWOT criteria. A total of 751 questionnaires were collected, after removing short and incomplete questionnaires, 633 of which were valid, with an effective rate of 84.3%. And the second stage questionnaire survey was carried out from May 10, 2022, to June 5, 2022. A total of 503 questionnaires were collected, after removing short and incomplete questionnaires, 485 of which were valid, with an effective rate of 96.4%. The demographic distribution of the selected sample is shown in Table 7. Finally, based on the survey results, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of smart cities’ developments from the perspective of CSG were identified.

Table 7.

The demographic distribution of the sample

Item	Category	Amount (the first-stage survey results)	Amount (the second-stage survey results)
Gender	Male	327	251
	Female	306	234
Age	Under 18	83	63
	18–30	296	227
	31–40	161	124
	41–50	63	48
	Over 50	30	23
Educational level	High school or less	130	100
	College	407	312
	Graduate school or higher	96	73
Income level	Under 2500 CNY per month	126	96
	2501–5000 CNY per month	261	201
	5001–7500 CNY per month	136	104
	7501–10,000 CNY per month	72	55
	Over 10,001 CNY per month	38	29

Preliminarily Determine the SWOT Sub-criteria

Table 8 in Appendix showed the questions and survey results in the first stage. According to the average score of all the questions (Q1–Q24) and their relationship with the total average score, strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats of smart cities’ developments from the perspective of CSG were determined (Fig. 2).

Table 8.

The questions and survey results of the first stage survey

Serial number	Question	Average score	Greater/smaller than total average score
Q1	Do you agree that smart education construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in education?	1.63	Greater
Q2	Do you agree that smart healthcare construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in healthcare?	1.34	Greater
Q3	Do you agree that smart transportation construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in transportation?	1.78	Greater
Q4	Do you agree that smart environment construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in environment?	1.54	Greater
Q5	Do you agree that smart social security construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in social security?	1.22	Greater
Q6	Do you agree that smart social security construction are beneficial for you to defend your interest?	−0.37	Smaller
Q7	Do you agree that smart aging construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in aging?	0.15	Smaller
Q8	Do you agree that the people around you have high awareness of the connotation of smart city?	−0.76	Smaller
Q9	Do you agree that smart economy construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in economy?	1.68	Greater
Q10	Do you agree that smart government construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in daily government affairs?	1.12	Greater
Q11	Do you agree that smart government construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in participation?	−1.03	Smaller
Q12	Do you agree that smart safety construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in social public safety?	1.23	Greater
Q13	Do you agree that smart emergency construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in social public safety?	−0.45	Smaller
Q14	Do you agree that smart safety construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in food hygiene and safety?	1.34	Greater
Q15	Do you agree that smart safety construction has enhanced your sense of material gain in internet and data security?	−0.98	Smaller
Q16	Do you agree that smart infrastructure construction are useful and convenience to you?	1.35	Greater
Q17	Do you agree that smart systems construction are efficiency and convenience to you?	0.41	Smaller
Q18	Do you agree that local government's smart city development plan can enhanced your sense of material gain?	0.99	Greater
Q19	Do you agree that smart cities development are helpful to realize self-worth?	0.93	Greater
Q20	Do you believe that the government’s policy of benefiting the people can enhance your sense of gain?	1.27	Greater
Q21	Do you agree that smart cities development are helpful to upgrade your socioeconomic status?	1.39	Greater
Q22	Do you agree that smart cities development are able to integrate into the regional cultural characteristics?	−0.45	Smaller
Q23	Do you agree that smart cities development are able to maintain social fairness and justice?	−0.21	Smaller
Q24	Do you agree that smart cities development supply are matched well with your material and spiritual needs?	−1.48	Smaller
Total average score		0.59

Fig. 2.

sub-criteria determination by Q1–Q24

To determine the sub-criteria, questions with an average score greater than the total average score were used to analyze the internal strengths and external opportunities. Similarly, questions with an average score smaller than the total average score were used to analyze the internal weaknesses and external threats (Fig. 2). The following examples (One each for S, W, O, T) illustrated the analysis process.

Internal strength (S): The average score of Q1, Q2, and Q3 were greater than the total average score, which showed that smart city development has improved citizens’ material quality of life.

Internal Weakness (W): The average score of Q17 was smaller than the total average score, indicating that low data synergy efficiency existed in smart city development.

External opportunities (O): According to Q9 and Q21, it could be speculated citizens’ consumption level will be increasing, which was regarded as beneficial to the development of smart cities (Rana et al., 2019).

External threats (T): The average score of Q22 and Q23 (smaller than the total average score) revealed that smart city development has made citizens’ low sense of belonging.

Based on the analysis like the above examples, the SWOT sub-criteria is preliminarily determined. Table 2 shows the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,and threats of smart city development from the perspective of CSG, as well as their sources.

Finally Determine the SWOT Sub-criteria

In the second stage of the survey, a questionnaire was designed to investigate the citizens’ support rate for the results of the SWOT sub-criteria identified in the first stage. Each criterion had more than a 50% approval rating (last column of Table 2), so it can be considered effective.

The Relative Importance of Criteria and Sub-criteria for Enhancing CSG in Smart Cities Development

To determine the weights of the SWOT criteria and sub-criteria, thirteen experts made up the expertise committee in this study, and each expert has been working on the development of smart cities for more than five years. Table 3 reports detailed profiles of the experts. The final results are shown in Fig. 3 and Table 4.

Table 3.

Profile of the experts

Experts	Organization	Role
A	Smart City Development Department in Government	Director
B	District government	Deputy director
C	Construction bureau in government	Deputy director
D	University	Professor
E	University	Professor
F	University	Professor
G	University	Professor
H	A large company related to smart city information technology	Manager
I	A large company related to smart city information technology	Deputy manager
J	A large construction company	Manager
K	A large construction company	Manager
L	A civil engineering association	Director
M	A civil engineering association	Deputy director

Fig. 3.

The weights of the SWOT criteria

As shown in Fig. 3, the RW of the SWOT criteria (S, W, O, T) corresponded to a CR of 0.03, which is lower than 0.1, proving that the analysis of RW was efficient. The opportunities (with weights of 0.4320) had the greatest influence on enhancing CSG in the development of smart cities. Other criteria in terms of weight include strengths (0.3409), weaknesses (0.1381), and threats (0.089). In this comparison, the inconsistency ratio is similarly smaller than 0.1. These findings suggest that, despite the strengths of smart city development (which are most closely connected to the characteristics of smart cities), opportunities (which originated from citizens’ characteristics and habits in smart cities) are the most essential factor for enhancing CSG. It indicates there are many opportunities to enhance CSG in the development of smart cities, which must be planned to turn into strengths.

After determining the prioritization of the SWOT criteria, the relative weights of each sub-criterion, relative prioritization, and total prioritization of enhancing CSG in smart city development were estimated (Table 4). In the last column of Table 4, the CR for each of the comparisons was shown, which was less than 0.1 in all four. Thus, none of the experts’ opinions contradicted those of the others.

Figure 4 depicts the relative weight and priority of each of these sub-criteria. The evaluation of internal items (strengths and weaknesses) revealed that “Improve the citizens’ material quality of life” and “Improve the convenience of citizens’ life” were ranked highest in strengths, while “Insufficient consideration of citizens’ needs” was placed at the top in weaknesses. Smart cities should develop corresponding intelligent systems along with the construction of infrastructure to enhance CSG, which can integrate various components of the city and make citizens’ life easier. At the same time, in the process of smart city development, it is also necessary to consider the needs of the citizens, so as to determine the supply factors of smart city development that match the needs of the citizens from the bottom-up, and ultimately achieve the goal of enhancing CSG.

Fig. 4.

The weights and ranks of the SWOT sub-criteria

In terms of the external parameters, “Citizens’ ever-growth needs for a better life” was the most important opportunity, while “Citizens’ low willingness to participate in the development process” was the main threat to the smart cities’ developments. These findings implied that although citizens had a continuous quest for a better living environment and city services, the government doesn’t provide appropriate avenues for citizens to participate, which resulted in a low willingness of citizens to participate. In order to enhance the CSG, the government should respond to the citizens’ pursuit of a better life and formulate relevant policies and participation avenues to motivate the citizens to participate in the development of smart cities. In the end, the citizens can realize their own interests in the process of participation, which will create a positive cycle to promote the citizens’ participation in the development of smart cities.

Develop and Rank Strategies for Enhancing CSG in Smart Cities Using the TOWS Matrix

At this phase, strategies for enhancing CSG in smart city development were developed by the strategic TOWS matrix. Different strategies were defined in four groups SO, ST, WO, and WT depending on the strategic space of the subject. After the formation of the Strategic Matrix SWOT, strategies SO, ST, WO, and WT were determined. According to the results in Table 5, a total of 14 strategies were developed to enhance CSG in SNC development.

Table 6 shows the pairwise comparisons as well as the final weights allocated to each element at four strategic dimensions. It also stated which sub-criteria were employed in each strategy. According to the results, “Divide smart infrastructure into different categories according to the hierarchy needs of citizens and promote the synergy development of smart infrastructure within and among different categories” and “Conduct surveys of citizens’ needs, analyze the priority needs of various groups of citizens (e.g., different ages, different careers, different incomes, and different gender), and formulate smart city development policies based on the priority of citizens’ needs for a better life” were found to be the most important strategies. While “Promote the integration of smart city development and regional cultural characteristics” and “Improve the legal system for the protection of citizens’ personal information data” were the weakest strategies. The overall weight of the SO strategies group is the largest, so the SO strategies group should be emphasized in enhancing CSG in smart cities (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.

The analysis of the strategic environment

Discussions and Implications

Discussions

The factors influencing CSG in smart cities (results in Table 1), SWOT criteria (results in Table 2) and the strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities (results in Table 5) are discussed respectively combined with the analysis results.

Influencing Factors of CSG in Smart Cities

The development of smart cities is technocratic in the past (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019; Kitchin, 2019), and citizen-centric smart cities are an emerging concept for achieving a shift from technocracy to humanism (Krivy, 2018; Yigitcanlar et al., 2019). This work integrates the concept of CSG into smart cities, as the material acquisition and spiritual feelings of citizens are both important criteria to reflect the development level of a smart city. The 17 critical CSG influencing factors (Table 1) are identified from the citizens’ sense of material and spiritual gain in aspects of various smart city services (i.e., smart education, smart healthcare, smart environment, smart transportation, smart governance, and smart aging), which can help evaluate smart city performance from the perspective of CSG (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017; D’Acci, 2021; Garau & Pavan, 2018; Huovila et al., 2019; Sharifi, 2020). Different from existing studies of smart city performance evaluations, this CSG-based work considers citizens’ needs in bottom-up manner, which emphasizes whether citizens’ actual needs are met by smart city services and advanced technologies. In comparison with the purely subjective indicators (e.g., satisfaction) (Lebrument et al., 2021; Xu & Zhu, 2021), CSG can reflect both the material acquisition and spiritual feelings of citizens in smart cities.

Smart cities are complex social-ecological systems that connect various parts of the city through advanced ICTs, and the incorporation of CSG can help in understanding the interplay between space and place in smart cities. “Urban Space” refers to the objective three-dimensional urban space in which things exist (i.e., the cartesian notion of coordinates), whereas “Urban Place” refers to human perception and experience therein (D’Acci, 2021; Lau et al., 2021; Szaszák & Kecskés, 2020). Based on the urban quality space–place conceptual framework developed by Cabrera-Barona & Merschdorf, 2018, smart city meant a human-centered, livable city in constant transformation, which corroborated the opinion of this paper. As an important mediator dimension in smart cities, advanced ICTs accelerate the space-place interaction process. However, the role and content of the citizen dimension are underappreciated. The two aspects (material acquisition and spiritual feelings) contained in CSG reposition the mediation role of advanced ICTs in facilitating the place-to-space improvement of smart city and emphasize the mediation intermediary role of the citizen dimension. The factors influencing citizens’ sense of spiritual gain included citizens’ sense of belonging and citizens’ sense of perception, which proved that citizens’ empowerment and participation were key drivers of the smart city. Meanwhile, factors influencing citizens’ sense of material gain represented the importance of handling advanced technologies to enhance citizens’ sense of “place”. In short, CSG provided a new theoretical framework and perspective for further research on space-place implications in smart cities.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for Enhancing CSG in Smart Cities

1. Internal strengths for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   Strengths were proved to be the second most important factor for enhancing CSG in smart cities, indicating the development of smart cities has brought many conveniences to citizens. The results analyzed by AHP indicated that S1 and S5 were the most important strengths. According to the observations of research and the views of experts (Berglund et al., 2020; Rahouti et al., 2021; Rice & Martin, 2020; Singh et al., 2020; Voegler et al., 2017), a city’s infrastructure and information systems both play a vital role in the quality of life and perception of its citizens. In contrast, the weights of S2, S3, and S4 were smaller. One of the reasons is the development of citizen-centric smart cities in China is still in the initial stage of exploration, and technology is still the main factor in the deep perception of citizens.

2. External opportunities for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   The findings in Table 4 revealed that the most significant criterion to enhance CSG is the opportunities available in the progress of smart city development. When the opportunity criterion is the greatest of the four SWOT criteria, it may be deduced that many of the smart cities in question’s latent potentials have not yet been exploited to enhance CSG. There are three main reasons for this result. One is that citizens’ production activities are closely related to their consumption, and citizens’ income and consumption levels will increase with the development of the city. The second is that citizens know that a better life is beneficial to their interests, and governments can help them build citizen-centric smart cities to meet their needs (Bouzguenda et al., 2019; Nicolas et al., 2021). The third is that the contradiction between the people’s growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced and insufficient development is the main contradiction, which leads to citizens’ trust in governments.

3. Internal weaknesses for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   “ W4: Insufficient consideration of citizens’ needs” is the main weakness of smart cities. Some researchers (Ruhlandt, 2018) thought that the satisfaction of citizens’ needs was the final target for smart city sustainability development. And some experts (Vu & Hartley, 2018) also had the opinion that the emphasis on the “hardware” (e.g. technology) and “software” (e.g. citizens’ needs) should be balanced. The weight of W2 ranks second in weaknesses, indicating that a sound legal system is very important to the feelings of citizens. The possible reasons for W1, W3, and W5 are that citizens are dissatisfied with smart city data usage patterns, and the ability to deal with disasters and imbalanced development patterns.

4. External threats for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   T2 was identified to be the most important threat, showing that Citizen-Participation incentive policies for smart city development still need to be optimized. T5 was identified to be the second most important threat, indicating that numerous data breaches put citizens’ personal data at risk. According to T4, we can get citizens dissatisfied with the consideration of vulnerable groups in smart city development. According to T1, we can get publicity for smart cities development still needs to be optimized. T3 shows that smart city development need take into account regional cultural and humanistic needs.

Strategies for Enhancing CSG in Smart Cities

1. SO strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   The SO strategies group is ranked the first overall weight (Fig. 5), indicating that smart cities should prioritize relying on internal technological strengths and leveraging external citizen demand to enhance CSG. Based on SO1, SO2, SO3, and SO4 (Tables 5 and 6), it can be found that as the core drivers of smart cities, the degree of synergistic development of smart infrastructure and smart systems is the basic guarantee of CSG enhancement. Besides, smart cities always gather a large number of high-quality education, transportation, healthcare, and business resources that attract citizens from surrounding towns, and cities land in them and make consumption. The capital brought by the migrant and local population promotes the speed of smart city development. So it’s important for smart cities to create a convenient and safe consumption environment and promote citizens’ online e-commerce and offline smart services consumption. What’s more, to enhance CSG in smart cities, the local governments are the only role who has the responsibility to analyze local citizens’ needs from the bottom-up. Local governments should be well aware of this, divide departmental responsibilities, and launch smart city development plans according to this principle. And it is also necessary to promote environmental-friendly construction thus providing a comfortable natural environment to satisfy citizens’ material needs.

2. ST strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   The ST strategies group is ranked the third overall weight (Fig. 5). According to Tables 5 and 6, ST1 ranked 5 among all strategies, indicating that one of the most urgent tasks facing smart city CSG enhancement today is to make all citizens aware of the importance of smart city development and to engage them proactively in all aspects of city services. In order to deal with this problem, citizen participation paradigms that meets citizens’ participation interests and behaviors based on the functions of different departments can be established to attract citizens’ participation. The results of ST2 and ST3 show that with the aging of society and comprehensive social development, it’s of great importance for smart cities to promote age-friendly, vulnerable-friendly, and regional-cultural-integrated construction. The result of ST4 reveals that citizens are afraid of the numerous information leaks that have occurred in the past, so blockchain technology can be used in smart systems and a multi-channel password lock mechanism can be built to protect citizens’ data.

3. WO strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   The WO strategies group is ranked the second overall weight (Fig. 5), indicating that smart cities should prioritize the use of external opportunities to compensate for internal weaknesses for transformational development thus enhancing CSG when adopting the WO strategies group. According to Table 6, WO2 ranked 2 among all strategies, confirming that the satisfaction of citizens’ material and spiritual needs is the core cause for enhancing CSG in smart cities. Thus it is suggested that the needs of various groups of citizens should be clarified and classified and policies related to smart cities’ developments should be formulated based on the priority needs of different groups of citizens. In response to W2, it’s suggested in WO4 that a multi-sectoral citizen feedback mechanism can be established to allow citizens to participate in the supervision of smart city development. Natural disasters such as the COVID-19 virus and urban flooding can pose a great threat to citizens’ lives and property thus decreasing CSG, so in order to improve urban resilience, we propose in WO1 and WO3 that the data synergy mechanism among different smart service systems should be improved, the synergy of smart systems and smart infrastructure in all phases of disasters should be promoted, and development of old community, new community, old district, and new district should be balanced.

4. WT strategies for enhancing CSG in smart cities.

   Although the WT strategies group has the lowest overall weight ranking, three of its strategies need also to be taken seriously. As a complement to the ST4, WT1 proposes a strategy to enhance the security of citizens’ data from another perspective, which is “improve the legal system for the protection of citizens’ personal information data”. Considering citizens’ insufficient benefits acquisition in smart cities, it’s suggested that a feedback mechanism for citizens on the benefits of smart cities should be established to make citizens share the dividends of development. Besides, since it is often difficult for people who do not understand the operational process of smart city services to use them, we propose in WT3 that “reduce the difficulty of using smart city public service” so that every citizen can use enjoy smart city services.

Implications

Using the 15 strategies (Table 5) derived from the analysis result, four policy implications for enhancing CSG in smart cities are provided.

Strengthen Publicity and Encourage Citizen Participation

The government should develop incentive policies for participation in line with citizens’ interests and increase the publicity of smart cities to fully mobilize citizens’ enthusiasm. Besides, it’s also of significant importance for the government to motivate citizens to participate in smart cities through appropriate educational measures. This is to make them aware of the importance of smart cities to their future lives. At the same time, it’s suggested that the sectors that have positive and negative impacts on citizen participation should be analyzed. Specifically, this involves reforming each specific sector of implementation and optimizing the citizen participation system in light of this.

Clarify the Responsibilities of Local Governments

China’s current smart city development plans and strategies for enhancing CSG are guided by the central government. And then, local governments formulate policies and implement them based on the central government’s guidance. However, local governments should play a more substantial role than this in forming a connecting link between the preceding and the following. The central government’s policies are top-down guidance. Local governments should conduct citizen surveys and then analyze the demand structure of CSG based on survey results, so as to formulate bottom-up strategies. In the end, the local government should form the final smart city development strategies based on the guidance of the central government and the needs of the local CSG.

Prioritize Citizens’ Needs

It is necessary for the government to formulate policies related to the development of smart cities from the perspective of citizens’ needs for a comfortable urban life. In addition, it is critical to prioritize citizens' needs so that they can be met step by step. The suggested integrated services, which include smart infrastructure and smart systems, should be built to find the prioritized needs of citizens in a timely and accurate manner, with the assistance of high technologies. The interplay of technologies and citizens’ prioritized needs can give a citizen needs realization framework for developing smart city from the bottom-up perspective, while still needing governance from the top-down perspective to govern the city.

Promote Age-Friendly, Vulnerable-Friendly, and Environment-Friendly Development

In addition to the local population, the population of smart cities is also composed of a large number of floating populations. A larger proportion of these populations are elderly and low-income, but their contribution to the development of smart cities cannot be ignored. The elderly take care of their grandchildren, enabling their children to work, and the labor imported by the low-income populations brings a steady stream of power to smart city development. In order for every citizen to share the benefits of smart cities and enhance their CSG, the trend of age-friendly and vulnerable-friendly smart city is unstoppable. Besides, as an important element for human survival, the natural environment should not be destroyed by the development of smart cities. The concept of “Green mountains and clear water are equal to mountains of gold and silver” should be practiced, and environment-friendly smart cities should be developed.

Conclusions

This paper identified influencing factors of CSG in smart cities and proposed strategies to enhance CSG in smart cities. Firstly, based on the policies promulgated, the meaning of CSG, and existing literature, 17 influencing of CSG and 6 dimensions in smart cities were identified from the perspective of material and spiritual. Secondly, a two-stage questionnaire survey was conducted at SNC and 10 external sub-criteria, as well as 10 internal sub-criteria, were analyzed. Then, by analyzing the AHP, the sub-criteria were compared separately and “citizens’ ever-growth needs for a better life” ranked top. Finally, using TWOS analysis, 15 strategies for enhancing CSG were determined and ranked. The top three important strategies are (i) divide smart infrastructure into different categories according to the hierarchy needs citizens, and promote the synergy development of smart infrastructure within and among different categories, (ii) conduct surveys of citizens’ needs, analyze the priority needs of various groups of citizens (e.g., different ages, different careers, different incomes, and different gender), and formulate smart city development policies based on the priority of citizens’ needs for a better life, and (iii) clarify the role of local governments and departments in enhancing the CSG process for smart cities in terms of bottom-up analysis of local citizens' needs and top-down implementation of national policies.

The findings of this study also have to be seen in light of some limitations, such as the insufficient scope of the survey, and lacking to analyze the structure of citizens’ needs. In future research, citizen surveys can be carried out within the scope of smart cities across the whole nation to determine the material and spiritual demand hierarchy of citizens, and then formulate strategies to enhance CSG, which will be beneficial to help the development of citizen-centric smart cities in China.

Appendix

See Tables 7 and 8.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.